Washington Square Park
Washington Square Park, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, presents an interesting challenge to the ghost investigator. While its always open and, thus, always open to investigation, there is no true quiet or true darkness in the park to work from.
A bevy of street lights and the noise and light of Philadelphia traffic - even late into the night - have to be filtered out of any evidence collected at this potentially-haunted location.
The history and legend surrounding the park, however, make the effort more than worthwhile. Moorestown Ghost Research plans to return several times to attempt to find some truth to the legends of Washington Square Park.
History
Washington Square was used as a 'potter's field' or mass burial ground from 1706 to 1825. Over 2000 Revolutionary War soldiers, dead from smallpox and other diseases, were buried there.
During the British occupation in 1777, prisoners of the Walnut Street Jail were starved and beaten to death before their interment in unmarked mass graves on the grounds of the park. (In an interesting connection to another site MGR has investigated, cannon blasts from Fort Mifflin were said to have broken the windows of the jail, adding freezing cold to the torments of our imprisoned soliders.) When the colonists retook the jail - and the city - a year later, many British guards joined their former prisoners in those graves.
Finally, the grounds were used for mass graves again during the 1793 yellow fever epidemic that took the lives of around 5,000 Philadelphians.
There are more than mass graves at the site. The Carpenter family also had a burial plot in the center of the site, after a suicide kept one family member from being buried in a church cemetary. Above-ground, one Revolutionary War-era soldier is interred in a memorial tomb after being unearthed in 1954.
The sheer number of bodies in this relatively small area, the violent means of their deaths, and the unusual history as a place alternately of mourning and gathering, creates an interesting case to pursue. More information on the history of the site can be found at ushistory.org.
The Experience
Our first visit in November, 2004, did not produce any photos or recordings of interest but hasn't decreased our interest in the park. Additionally, we learned some useful lessons about preparation for investigations, particularly outdoor investigations.
The cold too-quickly penetrated the layers we'd worn and fogging breath was a constant problem when taking photographs. I recommend that any ghost investigator take some photos under those conditions - even in your own backyard in the winter - to see for yourself how warm breath can create false positive images.
Special thanks to The Prison Society for providing the old stone prison image!